


Purgatory

by frangipani



Series: Adyton [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends: Legacy of the Force Series - Aaron Allston & Troy Denning & Karen Traviss
Genre: Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Skywalker family dysfunction, Skywalker parenting failboat, dark o'clock, hello there lotf and fotj nightmare fuel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 10:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14134611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frangipani/pseuds/frangipani
Summary: It was him and his mom. Always.





	Purgatory

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, still angry about LotF.
> 
> This is a companion piece to [Washing Blood with Blood](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7627876). Like that one, this one parts from the Dark Nest trilogy and the Legacy of the Force series up until Sacrifice. It also pulls on elements from the next series, Fate of the Jedi (the mind walking, Sinkhole Station), and of course puts them to work for my own nefarious ragey purposes.

In the medbay of the _Jade Shadow_ , Ben settles on the deck and fiddles with his vibroblade as he watched his mom and dad sleep. Mind walk, he corrects himself and goes back to fiddling with the vibroblade. 

They’re awake, just on some other plane of existence, his dad had said. Limbo, he thinks. Like here, but with better scenery, maybe. 

Ben gives another scan around the medbay. This part of the ship is a bit unfamiliar to him. If there wasn’t an emergency Ben generally had no reason to be there. 

But, he reflects, things hadn’t stopped being an emergency for a while, medbay or no medbay.

His mom looks better, at least, even if her face is hollower than he’d ever seen it. Now that she’s clean and properly flightsuited, it’s the smallness of her frame and her hair that shocks him. He can ignore the thinness, but the hair is kind of sloppily hacked off, asymmetrical. His dad had muttered something about wigs, but Ben had tuned him out. His mom is always so neat.

This doesn’t look like her. He hates it. 

\--

_Ben, Ben, Ben!_

His name echoed through the Force, quieter than a whisper, heavy with grief. For a second his whole being felt cold and he couldn’t form words for what he’d felt, anguished and _horrible_.

_Mom!_

After it faded, his cheeks were wet and his throat was hoarse. Space takes shape outside his canopy. He remembers he'd been tailing the Sith ship around the Hapes cluster when his mother’s presence flared up through the Force like a beam.

Ben wanted to turn around, feeling dread pull at him. Let someone else to do this.

He couldn't. It had to be him.

Ben followed the echo to Kavan...There he tracked something else too... the stench of the dark side all the way to underground tunnels, some old drainage system.

He stopped several times, a soft whimper escaping him. The feeling got stronger at a narrow, half collapsed area and he stopped, covered his face and a few sobs escaped him. He was too scared to stretch out with the Force. He didn't want to continue. 

He _had_ to.

Ben straightened up, put a hand on the dusty tunnel wall and staggered on.

\--

His father had told him clearly to stay put, but Ben wouldn’t go anywhere, no matter what. Until his dad and his mom wake up all there is to do is wait. 

Outside a crowd of Mind Walkers waits too. Ben can feel them. Many species, all gaunt and haggard from the effects of mind walking for too long. Why had her mother come to a place like this? Why run away from his dad to end up _here_?

He should have paid more attention when the Mind Walkers had talked, but he'd thought them lunatics, and then his dad had found his mom. 

Maybe he should have asked his dad. He wonders if his dad would have told him.

\--

Ben looked on at Jacen’s body with numbness, falling back on Guard training. That part of him cataloged the scene clinically. He knew what it would tell him, big picture wise. A struggle. 

He took holoimages, made notes and began to construct a sequence of events based on the blaster scorches on the walls, the slash high on Jacen's cheekbone, the cauterized puncture wound of a lightsaber just under the end of Jacen's collarbone, and his many gashes and bruises from the tunnel's collapse.

Cause of death had been both a lightsaber and a vibroblade stab to the chest. Some darts lay scattered by Jacen's belt. His lightsaber is across the room.

_A lightsaber, a vibroblade, and a blaster. Triple whammy._

After Ben sat down and reached out with the Force to his mom. She couldn't be too far. 

_I don’t care._ He thought at her, and he didn’t. _Better him than you_. 

All the universe fits in his relief. Jacen can die many times over. It can be just him and his mom. 

His mom didn’t answer. 

She always answered.

Ben reached further, but there was just absence where the Force presence of his mother should be. 

And then he remembered. He’d taught her to hide from the Force.

\--

Time stretches. Ben looks at the _Shadow’s_ instruments and while they tell him the time, none of it _feels_ accurate. He’s used to the weirdness of time while in transit, but the wait now makes it seem as if he, his parents, the ship are in stasis, nothing changing, everything cycling, repeating. 

Ubidden, Ben thinks of his uncle Han, his aunt Leia the way he hasn’t allowed himself for months. Both Anakin and Jacen gone. The worst kind of repetition. 

But it isn’t. Jacen hadn’t been Jacen. He’d been something else when he died.

When his mom had killed him.

And Ben had wanted to be just like him.

\--

It wasn’t his dad who got to him first. Had news gotten out so soon? Had he already called an emergency council meeting? Once everyone knew a Jedi killed _Colonel_ Solo, it was going to be messy, Ben thought of it with distance. It wouldn't be just any Jedi either, it'd been the Grand Master's _wife_.

_Is that why you won't answer, Mom?_

Jaina made her way to him among the strewn rocks and debris in the tunnels. 

She gasped loudly, the sound resonating long the rocks once she sees the body. Her feelings through the Force feel like a crashing wave. Ben blocked them out. 

He was good at blocking things out now.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. 

“I’m not.” Jaina let herself sag down by the pebbly stone wall staring at the body with a dull gaze. She should understand.

Her own brother had tried to blow her out of the sky. 

Tried to do the same to Uncle Han and Aunt Leia too.

(Tortured Ailyn Habuur to _death_. I _heard_ him -- )

(How could I have been so blind?)

“I’m not,” Jaina said shakily.

Don't cry, Ben thought. Everything will crumble if you cry. Thankfully she only inhales choppily, and Ben remembered patching pressure leaks along the _Falcon’s_ bulkhead. That was before he'd drawn his lightsaber on her. Ended up hurting Zekk.

It’d been what he'd thought Jacen had wanted him to do.

(How?)

“Come on, Ben. We have to go.”

Ben looked on numbly at the body.

 _Mom, why won’t you answer?_

“Ben.” Jaina’s hand is at his shoulder. “Ben.”

He stood up.

\--

Ben goes to the engineering station and calls up the main system diagnostic scans. The _Shadow_ had taken some damage on the way here. His dad had asked him for the reports before going into whatever trance mind walking entailed. Ben had just...forgot.

The Maw is generally an inhospitable place, even without the creeptastic half zombies outside, but despite the damage they'd taken, nothing looks critical to him. There’s a few adjustments to the hydraulic system that are simple enough for him to, but it takes him twice as long. He keeps looking over towards the medbay as if being there would make a difference.

\--

Sometime as they lift off from Kavan he felt his dad reach out. His dad didn’t feel like himself, his Force presence’s off. Ben drew away unthinkingly.

It’s his mom he wants to see.

He tentatively reached out to his mom again. _You were right, you hear me?_

No answer.

_Answer me, Mom._

\--

Ben checks his mother’s biomonitor when he returns to the medbay. His dad had opted against one, but that’s fine. Ben’s not worried about his dad. He’s never worried about his dad.

His mom’s biomonitor tells him everything he knows already.

Afterwards, Ben goes to the galley for food, even though he’s not hungry. He brings his tray to the medbay and eats there. 

His mom would hate him doing this. Briefly he has an image of her sitting up, and scolding him.

_Don’t be a slob on my deck, Ben._

Ben looks up towards the cot. She hasn’t moved.

\--

Cilghal was at the Jedi Council Shuttle with his dad. Ben felt her before he saw her. 

Jaina walked beside him. Ben wished she'd just go on ahead.

His dad came forward to Jaina and put his hands on her shoulders. She reached out to put a hand on his dad’s arm, teetering slightly enough that if Ben weren’t next to her, he wouldn't have seen it.

“Later,” she half gasped before he could say anything. “Later. I’ll be okay, Uncle Luke.”

His dad nodded and drew away, his attention now on Ben.

Much as Ben tried, he couldn’t look at him. This was the first time he’d seen him since Gejjen. Since he’d killed Gejjen...and Lefauf, his friend... _he'd_ died so Ben could get away. Ben had been spending his nights at Shevu's, his CO, after that.

_I haven’t told anyone else and I don’t want to, Mom. Not Dad, either. I...I don’t want to see the look on his face when he finds out what a moron I’ve been._

(I should have known.)

(I should have never told Mom.)

“A StealthX has limited capabilities,” Ben made himself say with his lieutenant voice, eyes still on the deck. His voice only broke a little. He was fourteen, that wasn't his fault.

“Ben --”

He flinched when his dad put a hand on his shoulder and forced the rest out. None of it was hard as thinking it was his mom he’d find dead in the tunnels. None of it. Not one bit.

“She can’t be far, Dad.”

\--

Ben wanders back out to the cockpit to continue compiling the damage reports. The Mind Walkers are still there outside of the ship. He wishes they would go away, has a bestial urge to fire up the lasers and kill them all.

He turns away from that thought, appalled.

Is _that_ what he’d learned? 

\--

They looked for her in a planet called Gerrenthum. 

His dad saw it in a dream a few weeks ago. It was another city planet like Coruscant. Ben didn’t sense his mom here, but then again, he hadn’t sensed her anywhere since Kavan. 

“Do you feel her here?” he asked as his dad angled them for entry. It was weird to see his dad in the _Shadow’s_ pilot’s seat. His mom’s seat. Wrong.

Things weren’t much different between them since his mom left, though his dad made more concessions. Like Ben being here in the co-pilot's seat. His dad's seat. 

“Not anymore.”

His dad had tried to talk about his mom, but other than the basic, Ben got the feeling he _couldn't_. Maybe it's the strain of balancing out Aunt Leia's grief, apart from his mom's absence. That's why she'd left, Ben's started thinking. To save his dad from the shame. To keep him from choosing between her or the order. 

The only thing that didn't make sense to Ben is why she hadn't called him to go with her. It was always him and his mom.

His dad still felt different in the Force, in ways Ben couldn't describe, something about the increasingly haunted look in his eyes, the way his shoulders were perpetually stiff as if there was incredible weight he was holding up...even though he’d left his place as Grand Master weeks ago, and no longer had the fate of the galaxy on him. His dad would have been forced to give it up anyway. He'd overheard that the Chief of State had called for an investigation.

Ben didn't think about it. He tried not to think of his dad at all.

Maybe it wasn't a concession to be here at all. His dad had to know that if he didn’t bring Ben along, he’d just search for his mom alone. Nothing would stop him. Nothing could. So maybe his father was _forced_ to bring him. This was also like it's always been.

He’d escaped from the _Jedi Temple_ itself. 

Ben wasn't going to think about Jacen’s hand in that either.

Or this.

\--

Back at the medbay Ben twists the vibroblade he holds in his hands. He can’t stay away from the medbay for long, no matter how much he still needs to scan to come up with a comprehensive report. He’s done most of the fixes he's found that he can. The rest needs his dad...or his mom.

_A lightsaber, a vibroblade, and a blaster. Triple whammy._

He stares at his mom’s unmoving form. 

Finally, he tries filling the silence with _something_.

“I slept with it under my pillow, you know,” he tells his mom, his voice slightly scratchy from disuse, feeling a bit self conscious about his dad also being there, though he can’t hear him. Neither of them can where they are.

“At Shevu’s place.” He thinks back for a second; only his mom would know who Shevu is. It kind of feels like talking in code. “I don’t know if that made me well-prepared or scared.” He scoffs a little. “I guess you’d say both, right, Mom?”

\--

Ben felt her shadow in dank alleys, by decrepit turbolifts, crumbling stairways, and darkened passages. Sometimes there were vague figures covered by sheets, maybe human, maybe not.

Maybe sleeping, maybe not, and his eyes grew hot.

“She’s not here,” his dad murmured insistently, beside him when that happened. “Ben, she’s not here.”

His dad had told him she thought Ben was dead, some illusion best he could tell. Ben thought if she could just _see_ him... the being they’d talked to rambled about _that scarred lady trudging around as if she were lost..._

All his dad had said to the being was, “When did you last see her?”

Ben couldn’t sense her and she never answered. 

If she were hurt somewhere, would he even feel it? His own mother. He can’t lose her.

\--

Against the bulkhead in the medbay, Ben dreams of an old conversation just after the Killik Crisis when they lived in Ossus. He couldn’t have been more than seven, before his dad had told him the rest after he’d returned from another one of his trips.

“Palpatine,” his mom had said. “The Emperor. He was...he was a bad man.”

Something about her tone made him frown and look up at her. 

Her gaze clouded. “I...worked for him.”

“Why did you work for a bad man?” 

His mom’s hands twitched a little. “Everyone makes mistakes, Ben. The important thing is not to make them twice.” 

Ben blinks awake. He goes to his mom’s cot and checks her biomonitor again. 

“Mom,” he whispers, reaching for her hand. He wants to crawl into her cot and huddle next to her as if he were a kid again, listen to her breathe. 

But he’s fourteen now, and this is all his fault.

\--

“If I could talk to her,” Ben whispered half to himself back at the _Shadow_ after another squalid street, another conversation about _the strange lady with a gash high on her forehead, that nice lady gave me a bunch of credits, bought a caf here, and passed out on the table, on the curb, on the side of the doorway, someone stole her vibroblade, didn’t look like she had much use for it y’know..._

“Why?” Ben finally summoned courage to ask his dad. His voice shook a little. “What’s wrong with her?”

The haunted look in his dad’s face intensified to pained. 

“It’s part of the same thing.” He swallowed. “She can’t hide from the link between me and her for long, even with hiding from the Force, so she...she damages it. The bouts of...unconsciousness are the side effects.”

Memories flood Ben. Her hand over his. The Osarian tapcaf. 

_Okay, let’s not tell your dad...”_

(I didn’t know, Jacen would do this, I didn’t. I didn’t know she would. I didn't know. I didn't know.)

“You talk to her.” Ben knew it was better to say nothing at all.

“I try. She doesn’t listen.” His dad’s face became weighed with sorrow, but when he spoke it sounded like the usual understatement, making Ben clench his fists. “Losing you...is real to her.”

“How?” Anger snapped out of Ben. "She’s a _master_ and Jacen’s already _dead_ , whatever illusion it was he took it with him--” he breaks off. It was useless. He wished Jacen were alive so he could kill him all over again himself.

His dad’s eyes focused on him. “Your mom wouldn’t want you to give into--”

“My mom thinks I’m dead!” Ben stormed at him, because at least his dad could still feel her, some part of her. _He_ couldn’t, and it was him and his mom. Always. “And even _you_ can’t convince her! What good are you?”

Ben rushed out of the lounge, his eyes stinging all over again. 

\--

For a long time he sits on the edge of his mom’s cot her hand in his, and the memory replays over and over like a puzzle piece he’s yet to fit. 

Ben already knows he’s made mistakes. 

His mother's work for the Empire wasn't. It was a circumstantial thing, his mom hadn’t meant it. She'd been lied to, his dad had said. She thought it'd been the right thing.

But that had been after. When he’d first mentioned it to his dad, he'd been too surprised to say much.

He’d looked at his mom with a frown. “You told him.”

His mom nodded. “I thought it was important.”

Ben smiled at his father. “Everyone makes mistakes,” he summed up, proud to remember.

His dad’s expression hadn’t cleared. “Mara, that isn’t--”

“For now, it is,” his mom answered brusquely, something odd in her face Ben couldn’t place. “It’s a good lesson. We all make mistakes. When that happens, we can only learn and move on.”

And in the medbay Ben holds his mother’s hand in his. He would say _I'm sorry_ , but he almost thinks if he does his mom might truly wake up, might reach out and wrap her arms around him tightly. 

She’d say, “No, Ben. It’s not your fault.”

He might not take it if she _doesn’t_. If she stays like she is.

Ben stays silent, her hand limply in his. 

\--

His dad burst into the cockpit after coming out of a meditation session, breathless.

“She’s going to the Maw cluster.”

Ben jerked up more at that small note of panic in his father’s voice, even though as usual his Force presence was tightly controlled. The content of his words registered later.

“The Maw?”

He nodded once.“The Shelter.”

Ben’s brow knotted. The place where Ben had spent the first two years of his life, almost, while war raged, a former research installation between two black holes. He had no memories of the place, some shadowy sense of doom came to him when he thought back to it, but that could be feelings cobbled together from what he heard. 

His mom had said he'd been very unhappy at the Shelter. Unhappy enough to close off from the Force. Ben didn’t see why she’d head to that place.

\--

Ben eats another mealpack at the medbay. Another memory filters in; this one is a little before they moved back to Coruscant. It’d been late at night and he’d been about to go to the ‘fresher when he’d heard his parent’s voices and their sense had given him pause. 

“What Ben needs is stability. He has that from Jacen. We can’t take that away without a good reason --especially if we'll be leaving Ossus soon. Coruscant will be overwhelming enough.”

"Ben will be with other apprentices -- and it'll be good for him to be around more people of different kinds." His dad had made a slight noise of frustration. "Jacen grows more and more distant from the order."

His mom came back with “The order isn't everything, and given how things are going, it shouldn't be." She softened her tone at the next. "Luke, we’d know if there were something wrong. Ben’s more open to the Force than he’s ever been.” 

There was an uneasy silence. Ben tried to work it out for himself if that was an argument. Their voices were level and the way they felt through the Force...it wasn't bad, really, but neither was it normal. It was still hard for him to read things through the Force though.

"Go on," his dad said.

"I wonder...if it's that the council takes too much of your time."

"That I'm not spending enough time with Ben." His voice sounded strained.

His mom adopted an appeasing tone. "That you might be overlooking how good Jacen is for him because the council is... draining."

"Mara--"

"The council needs you, but you can't expect to be putting out fires there, and not see things that don't exist at home." He'd heard the sound of a chair being pushed back. "The order isn't the answer to everything."

In the medbay, Ben focuses on his food and tries not to look over at his dad.

\--

The Mind Walkers gave Ben the creeps.

They talked in riddles and while his dad has his moments, it doesn’t feel like _that_. 

That they emerged from that room with all the floating bodies -- the station's gravitation system failed a long time ago. It’s a lucky thing they still have working airlocks. 

Nothing explained the hundreds of bodies all in a bizarre meditative state that _wasn’t_ , a look at them through their suit’s face places revealed skeletal faces, sensor readings indicating they beings within were barely alive. 

The smell in the room was terrible, like too many unwashed bodies, along with a vague note of decomposition that made Ben heave when he first lifted the faceplate of his vac suit. He occupied himself breathing through his teeth like his dad told him.

“Life is only a dream, our bodies mere phantasms of a long and restless sleep. When you keep us bound to our bodies, you interfere with our awakening,” a blonde human woman stated, her face is no more than bones framing sunken eyes as she floats towards them.

“It’s not our intent to interfere with your …awakening,” his dad told her. “We are looking for someone.”

“Someone beyond the shadows?” a Givin asked.

His dad shook his head. “No. Someone here.” He looked around the room, eyes fixed on the sole lightsource, a purple light in the middle among the mass of floating bodies. “Recently.” 

He began to weave a path around them.

A Gotal made a disapproving noise and followed. “You have no right to disturb someone between the shadows.”

Ben finally pinned it down. They sounded like a death cult.

\--

He returns to the cockpit where everything is unchanged, down to the mass of Mind Walkers still waiting. It may as well be yesterday all over again, but the memory that surfaces is different. Today it's his dad saying, "I wish you'd consider taking some of the academy tests."

Ben had pushed his plate away and stood from the table. 

(How long had that been? A year ago? More?)

"Ben!" his mom called.

"He always does this and I'm sick of it." He'd taken his plate to the kitchen then made as if to go to his room, but stayed by the hall. Through the Force, the atmosphere had become tense. Ben wondered what would come of it.

"I don't see why you keep pushing," his mom said. He didn't think she would have spoken first.

His dad sounded like he was prepared. "He's had years under Jacen. Those tests should be easy. I don't know why he's so stubborn about them."

"He thinks you're doubting him."

"I've told him--"

"It's more than just telling him."

There was a brief pause as if his father were debating how to say the next. "I wish we could talk about him learning under someone else."

"We _have_ talked about it," his mom's voice was level, but the emphasis was serious. "Ben doesn't want to. He's happy learning from Jacen." She'd stopped, her voice softer, and Ben almost hadn't heard her. "You're just pushing him away."

"If you could just tell him--"

His mom's "I don't see things the way you do" was bland.

"You don't want him to be angry at _you_." 

Ben made a face where he stood. 

"And I don't see things the way you do. It's not worth it." Ben heard her start clearing the plates.

"It's always like this," a note of frustration crept into his dad's voice. "You shield him too much."

"He needs it."

"Does he? Or do you?"

"He's not like us," his mom finally raised her voice slightly. "He's not and won't be. Let's not do this again."

He had gone to his room after that. He should have felt satisfied -- and he had been to continue on with Jacen -- but the exchange had stayed with him.

It was him and his mom. That was all. In the cockpit, Ben runs another diagnostic scan.

\--

“You want to meditate to death, go for it, but my mom doesn't belong here,” he told the Gotal.

“Your mother?” the Gotal replied. “No one here is anyone’s _mother_. We have gone beyond such things.” 

Ben flew at the Mind Walker, felt the ripple in the Force where his dad caught his vac suit, pulling him back.

“I think I see her,” his voice rang out, small in the dark purple-lit room, and strained. His dad floated a few meters away. The hold loosened and Ben forgot about the Gotal and pushed himself towards his dad.

\--

Ben checks his mom's fluids, wonders if he'll need an IV for his dad eventually. Probably not, his dad might want a lot of things -- galactic peace, everyone at the Council to get along, an endless supply of hot chocolate -- but he doesn't actually _need_ anything. 

“You’re...afraid,” his mom's voice comes through another memory. “Why?”

And Ben was back at the Jedi Temple's Sparring Arena. He shook his head, looking out to the bowl-shaped chamber with various training equipment.

“You know your father would never hurt you. It’s just sparring, and you don’t have to.”

He forced a smile. No, it was more like his dad would _let_ himself be hurt to prove to Ben how much he still needed to learn. 

But all he said was “Didn’t seem like he was expecting a ‘no’.”

His mom’s face tightened, voice growing steely. “You don’t have to, Ben.”

“He’ll never take me seriously. You’ve heard how he talks about Jacen. He won’t be happy unless I’m a good little academy Jedi.”

His mom hissed, “I don’t like you talking like that.”

He shrugged. “It’s true.”

“Jacen’s not perfect.”

“Neither’s Dad.” Which was true, but wasn't at the same time. Jacen had said some things were like that.

“You think he doesn’t know that?”

Another shrug. 

His mom sighed. 

“Ben,” she said a few seconds later, “he’ll be probing for the hold of the dark side. Keeping your center is more important than any show of skill. He knows you haven’t gotten enough practice and you’ll lack confidence because of it. He won’t be expecting skill. Keep your focus where it needs to be kept, no matter what he says.”

She moved her gaze down to the levers and actuation switches on the control panel, and he felt a slight unease from her. He smiled at her in response. It was his mom and him. Always him and his mom.

She lifted her gaze to his, eyes murky for a moment before they cleared. “And take off that ridiculous sparring suit. You’re not going to need it.”

“No,” Ben turned to leave and go down to the arena. “He can ask me to do that himself.”

\--

The Gotal railed at them, but he’d turned into no more than background noise as his dad checked his mom’s vitals and pulled her along back to the _Shadow_. Ben sensed presences behind them, but they didn’t sense threatening attack. They registered like part of the eerie landscape of the decrepit station

Ben doesn’t actually get a good look at her until they get her into the _Shadow’s_ medbay, on a cot and once he does, it’s all he can do to stifle a sob. He pulls on everything he’d learned about discipline, and plunges into the task without thinking, helping his dad finish taking his mom’s vac suit off. There’s no fresh wounds, but he sees the scalp cut they’d been using to identify her with for the first time. It’s a jagged scar now, deep and horrible.

From Jacen’s vibroblade.

She was dirty and as thin as everyone in this stanging station.

Another sob caught in his throat. This time his dad looked up at him.“Go compile list of the repairs we need to make before we clear out.”

“No, what’s wrong with her?" He was unable to stop the panic in his voice. "Why won’t she come out of their meditation?”

His dad’s face tightened. “I’m not sure. I need to do a more thorough check.”

Ben’s hands clenched. “So do it.”

“Ben, you can’t stay here.” His dad’s tone didn’t invite argument. “She’s not _herself_ and I don’t know how she’ll react with you here if she wakes up. I don’t how _you_ will.”

The air left him in a whoosh at that “if.” 

His dad’s expression changed. “She’ll be fine, Ben.”

“Mom,” Ben whispered.

“She’ll be fine.” His dad reached over to squeeze his arm, expression more determined. “Go, get me that list, Ben.”

\--

Ben wonders though if this is how it’s going to be. If his mom won’t ever wake up. 

If his dad can't bring her back.

(Maybe Dad won’t come back. And why would he? There's just me, and I ruined _everything_.)

(Dad had been right about Jacen. He's always right.)

(It should be me gone, not Mom.)

If Ben has to just stay here forever.

Alone.

_No one here is anyone’s mother. We have gone beyond such things._

Wrong.

Ben looks at his mother’s face. No matter how haggard, no matter how scarred, it's still his mom's face. Nothing changes that. It's his mom who'd killed Jacen, who'd kept his secrets from even his dad. For him. His mom who’d promised.

It’s him and his mom. Always.

There is no beyond.

\--

In the cockpit, Ben fiddled with the vibroblade. There were presences in the hangar now where there hadn’t been before. No hostile intent or anything came from them. They kept waiting.

These Mind Walkers can wait all they want, they’re never going to ever get his mother back, he vowed. Never.

He steeled himself with that until his dad calls through the ship comm and he hastened back down to the medbay.

His mom had a new flightsuit on, his dad having finished cleaning her up. He’s inserting an IV drip as Ben walked in and his nervousness rose.

“It’s nothing,” his dad said without looking up. “This gets nutrients in her faster.”

“How is she?”

“Malnourished, but otherwise fine.” He straightened up and Ben’s stomach drops at the next. “I need to talk to the Mind Walkers.”

“Why?” Ben snapped. He thinks of the Mind Walkers outside waiting like hawk bats, like vultures. “You can’t pull her back?”

A muscle in his dad’s cheek twitched. “Not from where she is.”

\--

He was maybe four or five, it's one of his earliest memories -- his mom sitting beside him on his bed the way he sits now beside her cot.

“Why’d you go away?” Ben had yawned sleepily. “When I was a baby.”

Her expression changed. She looked a little like the cub in the Little Lost Bantha Cub, but _he_ was the cub.

“I never wanted to, but I had to,” she said after a moment. “There were bad things and I needed to fight them to keep you safe.” She shook her head and stroked his hair. “I’m never going away again, Ben.”

“You promise?”

She nodded, her hand passing over the side of his cheek. 

“I love you a lot.” Something had occurred to him, like the Little Lost Bantha Cub. He was the cub. “And if _I_ go away?”

“I’ll find you.” She smiled. “Just like the storage shed, remember?”

He nodded. 

“Wherever you go. No matter where. Just stay put and wait for me.”

The memory leaves an epiphany, something he should have known from the start.

She’d gone _looking_ for him beyond the shadows. She thought --

“Mom,” he calls, squeezing her hand, urgency bleeding into his voice. “Mom, I’m right here. I’m right here. I’m right here.”

_Come find me._


End file.
